On a gray day last week on the Universal Studios back lot, film director John Landis pulled his black Volvo station wagon up to a busy construction site. Dressed in a natty blue suit, he eased through a work area of hard hats and flannel shirts. Landis made his way to the place where his new film "Oscar" was shooting before a devastating blaze in November swept across the back lot, causing $25 million in damage and consuming the New York brownstones Landis was using.

Next month, the Los Angeles Film Festival will likely welcome a new contingent: throngs of screaming girls. The annual event, which announced its lineup on Tuesday, will feature the world-premiere screening of "The Twilight Saga: Eclipse," the long-awaited third installment in the popular vampire franchise. It's not exactly typical film festival fare, but organizers are hoping it will serve a larger purpose. "If we program a movie like 'Twilight' that draws audiences that might not otherwise attend film festivals, hopefully we'll expose them to other cinematic experiences that we think are inspiring," said festival director Rebecca Yeldham.

"The Lovely Bones" has all the adornments of a prestige drama aimed at adults. It was made by an Oscar-winning director, adapted from an acclaimed novel and features weighty subject matter. Given that pedigree, Paramount Pictures was stunned to discover that the film's most promising target audience is teen and college-aged girls. Directed by Peter Jackson and based on Alice Sebold's bestselling 2002 novel, "The Lovely Bones" tells the tale of a 14-year-old girl who is raped and murdered, then watches over her family and killer from the afterlife.

August 28, 1988 | STEPHEN FARBER and MARC GREEN, Stephen Farber and Marc Green are the authors of "Outrageous Conduct: Art, Ego and the Twilight Zone Case," published this summer by Arbor House / William Morrow.

SEVERAL WEEKS after the "Twilight Zone" trial ended last year, one of the case's five defend ants, helicopter pilot Dorcey Wingo, escorted a visitor through the dusty parking lot of the Western Helicopter Co. in Rialto. Wingo stopped to stare at the light planes circling the adjacent airport and at the row of enormous helicopters parked on a nearby landing ramp. He had piloted dozens of combat missions in Vietnam, and since that time, flying has been his life, as well as his livelihood.

Lawyers for film director John Landis and four others asked the state Supreme Court on Wednesday to block their prosecution on charges of involuntary manslaughter in the July, 1982, deaths of actor Vic Morrow and two children during filming of the "Twilight Zone" movie.

This generation of young film-goers has the "Harry Potter" and "Twilight" movie franchises. But more than 70 years ago, audiences couldn't get enough of MGM's wholesome "Andy Hardy" series. It starred Mickey Rooney as energetic teenager Andy Hardy, Lewis Stone as his wise father, Fay Holden as his mother, Cecilia Parker as sister Marian and Ann Rutherford as girlfriend Polly Benedict. This white-picket-fence, idealized vision of small-town America spawned 16 films between 1937 and 1958.

EXCLUSIVE: When "The Hunger Games"hit big in the spring, many blogs were quick to point out the movie's similarities to "Battle Royale," a 2000 Japanese hit about teenagers in a totalitarian state fighting for survival in a government-imposed competition. Now a long-stalled U.S. remake of "Battle Royale" could be restarted -- as a TV series. In the last few weeks, the CW has had talks with the project's Hollywood representatives about the possibility of turning the property into an English-language show, said a person with knowledge of the situation who was not authorized to speak about it publicly.

Director John Landis was found innocent this afternoon of involuntary manslaughter in the deaths of actor Vic Morrow and two child actors killed on the "Twilight Zone" movie set. A seven-man, five-woman jury deliberated nine days before finding the 36-year-old film maker innocent of five counts of involuntary manslaughter in connection with the July 23, 1982, helicopter crash.